Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italian tourists who allegedly paid £70,000 to shoot innocent people in ‘human safari’ hunting trips to Sarajevo, with extra charged to kill children.
The wealthy foreign gun enthusiasts are accused of travelling to the city for ‘sniper tourism’ during its four-year siege in the 1990s by Serb-Bosnian militias amid the Bosnian War.
Between 1992 and 1996, more than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo by shelling and sniper fire in the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
The tourists, who are understood to have had ties to hard-right circles, allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for weekend trips to the besieged city where they participated in the massacre of residents for pleasure.
According to the case, they flew from Trieste to Belgrade on the Serbian airline Aviogenex to be ‘weekend snipers’ and join in the bloody siege, reportedly paying between £70,000 and £88,000.
The killing of children cost more, El Pais reported.
The investigation originated from a 17-page legal complaint submitted by Milan-based writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, with the support of former magistrate Guido Salvini and Benjamina Karic, mayor of Sarajevo from 2021 to 2024.
The allegations came to light in the 2022 documentary ‘Sarajevo Safari’ by Slovenian filmmaker Miran Zupanic, who gathered testimonies about the possibility of wealthy Italians and other nationalities paying to travel to Sarajevo to shoot at residents.
The tourists are accused of having paid large amounts of money to troops from Radovan Karadžić’s army, the former Bosnian Serb leader who in 2016 was sentenced to 40 years for genocide and other crimes against humanity.
The moneyed foreigners were allegedly transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo to take aim at passersby, whose everyday lives were tainted by the fear of being targeted indiscriminately by gunmen during the city’s siege.
Streets such as Ulica Zmaja od Bosne and Meša Selimović Boulevard, the main road running into Sarajevo, were nicknamed ‘Sniper Alley’ because of the extreme danger they posed to residents.
Meša Selimović Boulevard could not be avoided, however, as it was the way to Sarajevo airport.
The Bosnian Attorney General’s Office apparently shelved an investigation into the ‘sniper tourism’ because of the difficulty of probing such a case in a country still deeply scarred and divided by war, Gavazzeni told la Repubblica on Tuesday.
‘We are talking about wealthy people, with reputations – businessmen – who during the siege of Sarajevo paid to kill unarmed civilians. They left Trieste for a manhunt and then returned to their respectable daily lives,’ he said.
Lead prosecutor Alessandro Gobbi is understood to have a list of several people who can provide testimony and may be called to give evidence.
Gavazzeni said that there could be up to 100 tourists who took part in the mass-shooting of civilians for weekend sport.
The case mentions a Milanese businessman who owns a private cosmetic surgery clinic, as well as citizens from Turin and Trieste, Le Pais reported.
‘I hope they can locate at least one or two, maybe 10,’ he said.
The journalist said that one of the witnesses includes a Bosnian intelligence agent with the initials E. S., who claimed Italian intelligence had information about the allegations in 1993 and that classified files on the case still exist.
Apparently, Bosnian intelligence warned of the presence of at least five Italians in the hills around Sarajevo, accompanied there to shoot at civilians, according to the witness.
Other witnesses include a Slovenian intelligence official, victims, and a wounded firefighter who, during the 2002 trial of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, described ‘tourist shooters’ with distinctive clothing and weapons that distinguished them from Serbian soldiers.
The Bosnian consul in Milan, Dag Dumrukcic, told la Repubblica that Italy had the ‘full cooperation’ of his country’s government.
‘We are eager to uncover the truth about such a cruel matter and settle accounts with the past. I am aware of some information that I will contribute to the investigation,’ he said.
